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38 THE THEORIES BEHIND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
the architecture of the soul, then Jefferson’s would conjure up Monticello or the University
of Virginia. There are a few revisions and interlineations, a couple of words squeezed
in with a caret at the bottom of the line, but for the most part the lines of handwriting
simply roll on and on—“the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain,” to quote a
phrase from the letter, caught in vellum and ink, though that brain has been dust for more
than a century and a half. . . .
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Questions:
1.) What are the basic ways for an economy to fail in encouraging the right level of
innovation and information production? (Review chapter 1 of The Public Domain.)
2.) Are those the only problems that Jefferson was concerned with? What additional
dangers did he and Macaulay see? Does Macaulay see intellectual property as a matter
of necessary incentive, restraint on competition, or restriction of speech?
3.) What are the basic differences between the baseline assumptions of Diderot and
Condorcet?
4.) What are the strongest arguments for and against the notion of a natural right to intellectual
property?
5.) Boyle lays out a multi-part “Jefferson Warning” that he says is vital to making good
intellectual property decisions. How would you respond to that formulation of good policy
if you were General Counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America? Of
Google? Of the National Academy of Sciences? Diderot?